Customers who’ve observed a dip of their social media efficiency metrics over the previous yr will not be imagining issues.
Social media administration platform Buffer printed a report final week that examined social media engagement charges throughout Buffer’s 191,000+ month-to-month customers, incorporating tens of hundreds of thousands of posts despatched through Buffer’s social media posting device all through 2025.
Primarily based on Buffer’s information pool, Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads engagement charges declined all through the final yr, whereas Fb, Pinterest and TikTok charges elevated barely and X posts noticed considerably extra engagement.
Engagement on this report was associated primarily to likes, replies and shares in every app, bringing all of those interactions right into a single metric.
And primarily based on this, TikTok engagement charges had been primarily the identical, evaluating 2024’s information to 2025. LinkedIn, Threads and Instagram noticed important dips.
Why would that be? Nicely, elevated competitors attributable to extra content material being posted to an app is at all times an element, and LinkedIn has seen extra consideration lately as enterprise dialogue has migrated from Twitter/X to the app. LinkedIn additionally modified its algorithm in July final yr. In the meantime, Threads can also be seeing extra competitors for consideration as its energetic consumer depend continues to rise.
Possibly that has made it tougher to realize traction. On the similar time, Instagram has put extra emphasis on Reels over all different content material codecs, which could possibly be why feed put up engagement is down.
By way of will increase, Buffer customers noticed a giant rise in engagement per put up on X, although it is usually price noting that the rise famous on this report is definitely solely a leap of 0.8% engagement (2.0% to 2.8%).
So X engagement per put up was very low, and now it’s not as low, which isn’t as huge of a shift because the chart above suggests. However X posts are seeing extra motion, whereas Pinterest and Fb additionally noticed common engagement will increase.
It’s attention-grabbing to notice the adjustments, and to issue them into content material benchmarking, however actually, the precise will increase and reduces listed here are pretty minor, and should not present important information notes for social media planning.
The primary issue that drives engagement is relevance to the audience, and aligning content material with what every viewers group values and needs to see. If social media entrepreneurs can get this proper, then they stand a robust probability of making beneficial, resonant content material that may assist to spice up model consciousness, in addition to ideally drive extra sales-related exercise.
Utilizing platform insights instruments and topical analysis functionalities will present extra information on this, whereas studying the feedback on associated posts might additionally uncover useful perception to information decision-making.
Which ends up in what’s probably probably the most beneficial word of Buffer’s report: posts the place creators or manufacturers reply to feedback earn extra engagement than posts the place they do not.
In response to Buffer’s information, when a creator or model replies to put up replies, common engagement rises:
- 42% on Threads
- 30% on LinkedIn
- 21% on Instagram
- 9% on Fb
- 8% on X
- 5% on Bluesky
It could possibly be vital to planning to notice that participating with replies will assist drive extra attain and will enhance model consciousness and general engagement.
The report additionally mentioned that:
- Reels get 36% extra attain on Instagram than carousels, however carousels earn 12% extra engagement.
- Carousel posts on LinkedIn see round 3x extra engagement than video and picture updates.
- The median engagement charge for non-paying accounts on X may be very low (right down to 0% in lots of cases)
Plan out content material accordingly.
